Henry Wilson Allen Explained

Henry Wilson Allen
Birth Date:12 September 1912
Birth Place:Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.
Death Place:Van Nuys, California, U.S.
Occupation:Writer, screenwriter
Genre:Western fiction
Animation

Henry Wilson "Heck" Allen (September 12, 1912 – October 26, 1991) was an American author and screenwriter. He used several different pseudonyms for his works. His 50+ novels of the American West were published under the pen names Will Henry and Clay Fisher. Allen's screenplays and scripts for animated shorts were credited to Heck Allen and Henry Allen.

Biography

Henry Wilson Allen was born in Kansas City, Missouri. His older brother Robert Allen was an animator who worked for MGM.[1] [2] [3] Before he began his writing career he worked variously as a stablehand, shop clerk, and gold miner.[4]

In 1937 he began working as a contract screenwriter for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio. While his early work was for Harman and Ising's "Barney Bear" series, his longest collaboration was with director Tex Avery. Allen was credited as story artist on many classic Avery shorts, included Swing Shift Cinderella, Northwest Hounded Police, and King-Size Canary, among many others. Allen downplayed his contributions to the shorts, claiming that Avery merely used him as a sounding board for his own ideas.[5] He was later fired by Fred Quimby and went to work for Walter Lantz Productions[6] on several Woody Woodpecker cartoons that he co-wrote with Ben Hardaway including Wet Blanket Policy and Wild and Woody!. Following the 1948 shutdown of Walter Lantz Productions,[7] Allen returned to MGM and continued to write for Avery's cartoons that were released during the 1950s including Little Johnny Jet, The Three Little Pups, and The First Bad Man.

Allen's career as a novelist began in 1950, with the publication of his first Western No Survivors. Allen, afraid that the studio would disapprove of his moonlighting, used a pen-name to avoid trouble.[8] He would go on to publish over 50 novels, eight of which were adapted for the screen. Most of these were published under one or the other of the pseudonyms Will Henry and Clay Fisher. Allen was a five-time winner of the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America and a recipient of the Levi Strauss Award for lifetime achievement.

Allen died of pneumonia on October 26, 1991, in Van Nuys, California. He was 79.

Partial bibliography

Attributed quotes

"The wishbone will never replace the backbone."[9]

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Robert Yeats Allen. September 18, 2020. Village News. en.
  2. Web site: Yowp. October 28, 2011. Tralfaz: Harman-Ising Studio Staff, 1937. September 17, 2020. Tralfaz.
  3. Web site: Yowp. December 19, 2017. Tralfaz: Alias St. Nick. September 17, 2020. Tralfaz.
  4. Web site: Finding Aid for the Henry Wilson Allen Papers, 1955–1985 . Online Archive of California website . March 21, 2007.
  5. Web site: Oh, Heck! . Something Old Nothing new blog . March 21, 2007.
  6. Web site: Yowp. May 7, 2013. Tralfaz: Run For the Hills. September 18, 2020. Tralfaz.
  7. Adamson, Joe (1985). The Walter Lantz Story. New York: Putnam Books.
  8. Web site: Today's Trivia . Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine website . March 15, 2005 . March 21, 2007.
  9. [Todd Harrison|Harrison, Todd]

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